Nurses at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester will hold a pre-strike community rally Sunday afternoon across the street from the hospital to demand an increase in staffing levels.
The nurses' union has made it clear for weeks that they plan to strike unless management agrees to boost staffing to better protect patients during and after the coronavirus pandemic.
The nurses are currently in contract negotiations with Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare, which owns the hospital.
St. Vincent nurses, community and labor supporters, along with state and local public officials will join the rally ahead of Monday’s strike.
About 800 nurses plan to start the strike at 6 a.m. on March 8, according to a statement from the Massachusetts Nurses Association.
Tenet and St. Vincent management "refuse to heed nurses' call to increase staffing levels to better protect their patients during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and beyond," the union said in a statement.
St. Vincent maintains that staffing levels are appropriate and called its most recent contract proposal on Jan. 28 its "last, best, and final" offer.
The latest contract proposal also includes wage increases between 5% and 22% by the end of 2022, enhanced benefits for part-time nurses and hiring critical care nurses.
St. Vincent CEO Carolyn Jackson previously said that St. Vincent has the "most generous staffing language of any contract with the MNA" in the state and the hospital is prepared in the case of a strike.
Muldoon said the MNA modified its proposal to ask for staffing ratios to be mostly a 1-to-4 ratio of nurses to patients with some 1-to-5 ratios. She said currently all nurses on the surgical-medical floor have five patients.
The last time St. Vincent nurses went on strike was in 2000, when a 49-day work stoppage helped them get their first union contract.
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March 07, 2021 at 07:30PM
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Nurses at Worcester Hospital Hold Rally Ahead of Planned Strike - NBC10 Boston
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